


Positive Rate

by coldhope



Category: Cars (Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Dusty's late-night thoughts, Introspection, also turbofan envy but that's something of a given, and rotor envy, post-Planes: Fire & Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4316421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dusty considers what it might be like to be the kind of person you look up to. Figuratively--and literally, in terms of flight performance. Short introspective piece set after Planes: Fire & Rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Positive Rate

Sometimes he wonders what it's like, to be different. To be big. 

Landing on the _Flysenhower_ had been terrifying--not so much that the runway was _short_ but that it was pitching up and down and rolling left to right in an unpredictable nauseous lurch that made his tank roll just looking at it. Runways shouldn't move. Runways should be _flat_ , and in all preference much much longer than necessary. 

But he's never been really afraid of overrun. Even fully loaded--even fully loaded with retardant as well as fuel--he's pretty light. His engine isn't huge; the only reason he was able to do some of the things he's done has been his lack of weight. And determination. That's part of it. 

He's watched the big jets roll--he'd even signed a BA Airbus 380's nose before all this went down, secretly a little awed by the sheer size of the guy, his tire-mark _D_ a tiny smudge on that vast white prow--and he's always wondered what it's like for them. What it's like to roll and roll and roll and _roll_ building up your speed, reaching for V1, watching the needle creep round the dial, waiting for the moment to rotate. It always seems so slow a rise, and he wonders if they feel that too, the terrible ponderous slowness, and if it ever worries them.

He never thinks consciously about it himself. He doesn't spend his takeoff rolls intently focused on his airspeed indicator: he can feel it very clearly when his wings begin to generate enough lift to take him off the ground. When you're big enough to fit a whole damn city block inside of you, the world must feel different. Calculating things ahead of time must be...necessary, especially with varying payloads. 

Dusty does wonder what it feels like to have, oh, a couple of high-bypass turbofan engines pushing him through the sky with seventy-four thousand pound-feet of thrust each. No gearbox issues with _those_ babies, no, you can run them as fast as they're designed and throw a damn hailstorm through them and they'll just keep spinning. He wonders what it's like to fly as high as the big jets, up where the air has very little air in it. 

But just recently he's wondered what it's like to have rotors. 

He can't fly unless he is moving fast enough through the air for his wings to generate lift; that's why fixed-wing craft need a runway to take off and land. But a helo's rotor blades act as small individual wings, each of them generating lift as it chops through the air. Dusty's prop is analogous to a much-smaller rotor, pulling him forward, but rotorcraft can use theirs to move in all directions. He imagines being able to wind up his engine and just...lift into the air from where he sits, hovering in place; tilt a little and change the blade pitch and travel in any direction he pleases, including backward. 

He thinks it'd be a hell of a lot easier to snark at people if he could do it while hovering twenty feet off the ground in front of them, especially since his rotor wash would make them gasp and squint. He thinks maybe if you can do that you get used to snarking at people, that it becomes a way of life. That if you need it to be, it can be a shield. 

Dusty can still feel the frantic dizzy flush of pride that had flooded through him at _Good move, partner_ , just before something in his gearbox blew with a grinding heave of tortured metal. He can't remember much between that single moment of terrible wrenching pain and the time, days after, when he woke to find himself back in Maru's hangar, sore but whole for the first time in ages. _You're fixed_ , the tug had crowed, and the day outside was so bright it hurt--but not so bright it blocked out the little undeniable hint of a smile on Blade's face, or the genuine relief and concern from the rest of them. 

Cabbie might have been able to haul the combined weight of the smokejumpers, Windlifter might have been able to rescue downed team members, but no one, no one had been stronger than Blade Ranger that night in Augerin Canyon; Dusty thinks maybe no one ever can be. He'd somehow not been surprised to see the red-and-white arrow of the air boss--terribly burned, still so hurt, Chrysler knew how he'd gotten Maru to let him off the ground--catch and hold the RVs. Not surprised, just glad, somewhere beyond the fear and the fire and the urgency of everything. Blade had been there, and that made him able to push it. If Blade could work a fire still a rotor's width from shutdown, Dusty could damn well push his engine. Part of him was reveling in the power he'd denied himself even as he could _feel_ the hot and sudden wrongness of his damaged gearbox first protesting and then beginning to scream. 

Then there had just been the lovely clean awareness of a good drop, a drop right on target, and he'd seen the RVs make it to safety in the tunnel. And Blade, calling his name. Blade, hurting and exhausted but...proud? Yes, proud, and Dusty had underestimated just how _much_ he'd wanted the air boss's approval, how much he'd needed it. Then there was just pain, and space. 

He pushes the thought away again. It had come out all right, in the end. Everything had, for a certain value of _all right_. But sometimes Dusty wonders, he really wonders, what it's like to be important. Sometimes he wonders what it's like to fly backwards. Sometimes he wonders what it's like to be the sort of person whose tiny little smile could make someone's whole world shift subtly in its gimbals. 

_Maybe one day_ , he thinks, sleepily, as he does when these thoughts come to him in the small hours. _Maybe one day I'll be scary and amazing. Gonna take some work, but...hey, I know a mechanic can make things_ better _than new. Maybe one day I'll be worth looking up to._


End file.
